ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

Check out Juliet Kemp's cool article on LinuxPlanet about Green Computing. Kemp compares power usage and lifespan between desktops and laptops, adding, "But power usage isn't all there is: there are those production and disposal costs, for which lifespan really does matter." Kemp also talks about the push for more efficient code.

Q: Who are you?A: A. L. Spehr, "Alex" – blauzahl online.I co-founded KDE's BugSquad, a bug triage group. I've done all sorts of other little things for the KDE Project as well. Through people I met working with the KHTML (browser rendering) people, I was hired into my current job at froglogic GmBH. Q: What do you currently do in open source? What do you love about it?A: Lately I've been coordinating the KDE presence at various conferences in the USA. Our country is lagging behind the rest of the world in our publicity outreach. The first half of this year, between development and promotion work, I was going to at least a conference a month. After having three in a row, I'm...

On October 7, 1996 I gave birth to my one and only child. She turns 13 on Wednesday, so I'll officially be the mother of an official teenager. Yipes.On March 5, 2009 I wrote about a fellow mom and blogger, Amber Graner, who was putting open source to the mom test. Since then, I've had the pleasure of meeting Amber in person and rooming with her at OSCON in July, admiring her enthusiasm as she helped organize Atlanta Linux Fest in September, and seeing her again a few days later when she attended Ohio Linux Fest. From testing open source to organizing and attending community events – that's a long way to come in a very short short time.On May 28, 2009 Linux New Media announced the birth...

Our blogger and columnist Bruce Byfield wrote a follow-up to the FSF mini-summit of women in free software. At Ohio LinuxFest last week, I spoke briefly to Deb Nicholson about the summit and it sounds like the "mini" nature of it worked well. Stormy Peters wrote about the mini-summit on her blog and she points to the mailing list for folks who are interested in this event and its outcome.Stormy Peters is one of many women attending the Grace Hopper Women in Computing conference this week and she's also covered it on her blog. Busy busy! Let me know who else is covering the Grace Hopper event because I'm sorry I'm missing it and I'd love to read more about it and link to coverage...

A couple of weeks ago I bought a box of cheerleader postcards and have been sending them out to friends and family members (and even a colleague). The pictures amuse me, and everyone loves getting postcards, right?My mom was a high school cheerleader. She was also the lone woman in her high school's saxophone quartet, so you could say she was a well-rounded individual. I never mastered an instrument and I only lasted one wrestling match as our school mascot (and I still have an occasional nightmare about giant Blue Jays attacking me). Even though I never tried out for the cheerleading squad in high school, I sometimes feel like a cheerleader in open source. I love feeling like I helped...

We posted the video of the LinuxCon Shuttleworth keynote online. I think it's important to note that live streaming and video archives was provided in partnership with the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation opted to make all the keynotes available for free in an effort to allow as many people as possible to participate in the first LinuxCon.Before the video went online, I emailed Mark Shuttleworth and asked him whether he would like to say anything about the video or the feedback he received after his talk. He replied to my email and has no comments to add at this time. You can watch the video at: http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/linuxcon/shuttleworth

I spent most of my LinuxCon time near our camera person, following along as he streamed the keynotes and select tracks. Henrik was kind enough to post the Linux kernel roundtable video online for us, and I'll send out a tweet as soon as additional archive videos are available.On behalf of Linux Pro Magazine, I'd like to send a big THANKS! out to the Linux Foundation for partnering with us to provide Live streaming from LinuxCon. I know that LinuxCon organizers wanted to make the event available to as many people as possible, and the streaming – particularly the free keynote streams – helped them do so.Of course no event is perfect. During his opening remarks, Jim Zemlin talked about...